President Donald Trump began Friday morning by calling the FBI and Justice Department upper leadership corrupt, despite having already removed most of the upper leadership. Then he quoted Fox News.
According to the Daily Beast, Trump was on the phone with Sean Hannity recently, who persuaded the president to release the FISA memo. The infamous memo seems to have inspired another White House tweetstorm.
The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans – something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018
Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-Calif.) memo has dominated the news cycle since its existence was revealed just two weeks ago. In it, Nunes alleges that top officials abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to snoop on a former member of the Trump campaign, Carter Page.
Although Trump alleges bias in the upper echelon of the nation’s highest law enforcement branches, pretty much anyone involved is gone. FBI Director James Comey was fired by Trump, Jeff Sessions took over as attorney general for Loretta Lynch, and Sally Yates is out as assistant attorney general.
One recent resignation, though, has piqued the right. When Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe announced he was leaving the FBI in advance of his retirement, the assumption became that he would be outed by the Nunes memo.
It was good enough to fire McCabe, no one argues its factually inaccurate, but now days later they want to protect the names of those involved in a scandal that was big enough to fire a senior official a month before retirement? They don’t deserve a pass on that!
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 1, 2018
Really, only Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein remains, and the New York Times revealed this week the memo goes after him. Rosenstein also is supervising Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign and its ties to Russia.
The White House told reporters yesterday that Trump was “OK” with releasing the memo, and was planning on returning it to the House today. While obliquely referencing his decision on Twitter, Trump quoted a guest on his favorite morning show, Fox & Friends.
Appearing on @FoxFriendsFirst next hour to discuss #ReleaseTheMemo. It looks like today is the day for some accountability for the Deep State… @JudicialWatch @FoxNews @realDonaldTrump. pic.twitter.com/lPAPgd2hk8
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) February 2, 2018
“You had Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party try to hide the fact that they gave money to GPS Fusion to create a Dossier which was used by their allies in the Obama Administration to convince a Court misleadingly, by all accounts, to spy on the Trump Team.” Tom Fitton, JW
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018
On Twitter, Hannity denied that he was speaking with the president about the memo.
https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/959231976208326656
As with any stance Trump takes though, people noted that he once stood for something else. Trump took a hardline stance in 2014 against a government agency releasing classified information, demanding that the CIA torture report—one of the more damning assessments of American abuse of power—not be released.
The CIA report should not be released. Puts our agents & military overseas in danger. A propaganda tool for our enemies.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2014
The House is debating how best to release Nunes’ memo, with the possibility being that they read it out loud on the House floor, so no members could be prosecuted for releasing classified information.
